Bishop will take to the skies to exorcise entire Colombian city

'A Colombian bishop is planning to exorcise an entire city this weekend, sprinkling holy water from a helicopter.

Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo Montoya, the bishop of Buenaventura, will say a prayer intended to purge the area of demonic infestation.

The city is beset by violence, drug smuggling and poverty. Montoya disclosed the exorcism shortly after a 10-year-old girl was tortured and murdered.

He told local radio: “We have to drive the devil out of Buenaventura, to see if we can restore the peace and tranquility that our city has lost due to so many crimes, acts of corruption and with so much evil and drug trafficking that invades our port.

“We want to go around the whole of Buenaventura, from the air, and pour holy water on to it to see if we exorcise and get out all those demons that are destroying our port, so that God’s blessing comes and gets rid of all the wickedness that is in our streets.”

Colombia’s army is reported to be providing the bishop with a helicopter for the aerial exorcism during the city’s annual patron saints’ festivities.

Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, was named as the country’s most violent place in 2014. According to Human Rights Watch, “many of the city’s neighbourhoods are dominated by powerful criminal groups that commit widespread abuses, including abducting and dismembering people, sometimes while still alive, then dumping them in the sea. The groups maintain ‘chop-up houses’ (casas de pique) where they slaughter victims, according to witnesses, residents, the local Catholic church and some officials.”'